Advertising Space
by Flaignhan
Summary: She reads it through a couple of times, just to make certain that she's not grasping at straws, that she's not seeing coded messages where there is, in reality, a painfully lonely person sitting in a dingy room desperate for someone to love them.


**A/N: **So I had a random Sherlolly urge. Hope you enjoy.

* * *

**Advertising Space**

**by Flaignhan**

* * *

It's three months until she spots the first one. He must know her better than she ever realised, because he knew, _he knew_ she would be on this train today, tiredly leafing through the _Evening Standard_ as the carriages rattle through the tunnels, bringing her closer and closer to home. She has bypassed the rather dull celebrity gossip, briefly paused at an article about mortgage rates (further confirmation that condemns her to being a lifelong tenant) and is now smirking at the classifieds, her tummy warm from the fact that she, at least, hasn't resorted to newspaper advertisements in order to try and get a date.

When she reads it, her breath hitches, her heart freezing in her rib cage, her skin prickling with uncertainty. The carriage judders as they hit a particularly sharp bend in the track, and she loses her sure footing, grabbing onto the nearest rail and just managing to keep herself upright. She takes a steadying breath, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, before she gives her newspaper a shake and re-reads the small square inch advert.

_M, 34, enjoys puzzles and hats. _

_You are F, 31, with BSOH, _

_cat, & peppermint shampoo. _

The advert stops abruptly, and she wonders if he ever considered tacking a last sentence onto the end, just something, some sort of conversation starter, anything at all, just so she could imagine the words being said in his voice, the intonation changing as his lips curve into a smirk. But no, all there is for her to read is a simple statement of fact. _I exist, and so do you._ It's nothing, other than an insult to her (admittedly terrible) jokes.

But it's confirmation that he's alive.

And more than that, it's confirmation that he's thinking about her.

She closes the newspaper and folds it in half, holding it against her chest with one forearm, the other encircled around the pole in the centre of the carriage, lest they hit a bend again. As much as she tries, she can't stop the smile from spreading across her lips, so wide it makes her cheeks hurt after a few minutes, but she doesn't care. She bites her lip, glances up at the map above the carriage doors, and decides that she has most certainly got enough time to read it once more.

Or maybe even twice.

* * *

He frowns when the owner of the guesthouse hands him an envelope. Its white paper is pristine, not a mark on it, no dog-eared corners, no crease from careless transport. It's as though it's just been sealed, but from the plainly recognisable script (and the ostentatious eighteen carat Cartier nib) he knows that it has come from far, far away. Without a word, he tucks the envelope into the inside pocket of his coat and makes his way upstairs to his room, his brow set in a frown as he considers the fact that someone is tracking him, and doing it well.

Resolving to be far more cautious from now on, he thrusts the heavy room key into the lock, his teeth gritting together when he turns it and a loud, nerve wracking screech sounds. He huffs and pushes open the door, entering the room, before slamming the door shut once more behind him. He shrugs off his coat and slings it over the back of the chair in the corner, then quickly unbuttons his jacket and removes that too. He looks down at the bare floorboards and heaves a sigh. The bed is full of popped springs, the cleaners don't wash the sheets on a hot enough cycle (there are blotchy black mascara stains on his yellowing pillow case) and the window doesn't open, leaving him with no option other than to smash the grimy pane of glass should he need a quick escape.

Pushing his endless list of complaints to one side, he crosses over to his coat, snatches up the envelope and slides his finger under the opening, the thick paper yielding with small, crisp tears. He half expects a call to arms, orders to return home, to perhaps save the monarchy from another embarrassment, or maybe to solve a particularly grisly murder. There are no instructions inside however, no enquiries as to his wellbeing, nor any suggestion that this is a communication between brothers at all.

Inside is a newspaper, folded into thirds, its thin pages packed neatly into the envelope. He pulls it out with some difficulty, so tightly is it wedged in there, but eventually it comes free and he is able to unfurl it. It's a three week old copy of the Evening Standard, and he narrows his eyes, wondering why on earth Mycroft has deigned to ship this all the way over to him. He scans the front page, the usual unimportant guff about the Prime Minister doing something vaguely political, and then he skips to the next page, glancing over the weather forecast, and a bolded, brash headline about NHS cuts, then leafs through the rest, nothing of note jumping out at him.

That is, until, he reaches the last few pages. The classifieds catch his attention, the memory of his long since submitted advertisement rearing in the back of his mind. He had thought they were going to print it in an issue a couple of weeks prior to this one, so unless his advert somehow fell by the wayside, Mycroft can't simply be telling him that he's an idiot who needs to be more careful.

He lets out a soft _'oh' _when he sees it, his brain committing the words to memory at a single glance.

_F, 31, GSOH, likes cats &_

_crisps. WLTM arrogant sod _

_for coffee & maybe more._

He sinks slowly onto the bed, the springs creaking under his weight, and reads it through again. She's more observant than he gives her credit for, and smarter too, waiting long enough so as not to arouse suspicion from any regular readers of the lonely hearts. His lips twitch at the edges as he remembers a rushed lunch of Quavers on their last, proper day, and he reclines on the bed, newspaper resting against his chest, his hand flat on top of it. He stares at the ceiling and lets out a sigh. Through the final few pages of the newspaper, he can feel the soft _thump, thump, thump_ of his heart, as he tries to imagine her voice saying the words 'arrogant sod'.

He can't do it, can't quite capture her exact tone, and his brain only presents snippets of memories for him to use as a source of inspiration. Various unpleasant phrases come to mind, providing no help whatsoever.

_You always say such horrible things, every time, always. _

_Why d'you always have to spoil - ?_

_I don't count_.

He rolls over onto his side, the newspaper rustling against him, but he doesn't get rid of it. He listens to the distant roar of the traffic, the near constant beeping of horns, and stares at the water stain on the wall, waiting for the sleep he knows will never come.

* * *

She looks without hope these days, has even started to wonder if the initial advert she saw was even _meant_ for her. It could have been a coincidence. There are four million women in the city after all, and she can't be the only one who uses peppermint shampoo and has a cat. There are plenty of oddballs who like puzzles and hats too, oddballs bold enough to declare those two things as their defining qualities on a lonely hearts ad. She's beginning to feel a little stupid for placing hers, _especially_ stupid given the sixty quid she had to fork out to get it printed. Unsurprisingly, nobody replied to her, though to be quite honest, she would have been slightly concerned if somebody had. Nevertheless, she boredly flicks through the newspaper, leaning against the clear partition between the end of the seats and the carriage door, her eyes scanning through adverts, searching for some out of place phrase, or a word choice that drags up distant memories from the back of her brain.

She's just about to give up and deposit the newspaper on an empty seat, ready for the next commuter, when something catches her eye. She reads it through a couple of times, just to make certain that she's not grasping at straws, that she's not seeing coded messages where there is, in reality, a painfully lonely person sitting in a dingy room desperate for someone to love them. With each reread, her frown becomes more pronounced as she chews on her lower lip, the words whirring round in her mind.

_M, 34, terribly sorry for_

_everything. WLTM F, 31,_

_to make amends._

Unlike his last message, this does not settle that constant nagging in the back of her mind. While it is confirmation that he is, as hoped, still alive, his tone is quite different. Gone is the quiet smugness that so clearly identified it as him, gone are the playful jibes about her social skills, gone are the seemingly trivial pieces of information she's surprised he's even bothered to store. Instead, what she's facing is the prospect of him doing something foolish. _Incredibly_ foolish. She doesn't know what he's apologising for, whether he's about to put all of her efforts at risk and waste the second life he has been granted by being reckless and stupid.

She folds the newspaper in half and hugs it to her chest. It's stupid, really, but when he's so far away, and so far out of his comfort zone, she wants to keep his words as close to her heart as she can.

* * *

The envelope finds him in Mombasa, somehow. It is presented to him without a word when he returns to his hotel, and he frowns down at it, weighing it in his hands. It is another newspaper, he is certain, and after he nods his thanks to the hotel owner, he sets off for the stairs, wiping his sweaty brow with the back of his forearm, before he rolls his shirt sleeves even higher up in a vain attempt at letting some fresh air reach his skin.

He collapses on his bed as soon as he makes it into his room, the coarse bedclothes somehow managing to retain all the heat of the swelteringly hot day, leaving him even more uncomfortable than ever. He wishes he had had the guts to go somewhere with air conditioning, but his need to keep a low profile has left him here, in a back street hotel with an untrustworthy water supply and a room that could double as a sauna.

The glue on the envelope is already starting to give up after sitting on the reception desk all day, no longer protected from the heat by a cool, combination locked leather briefcase. His sweaty hands are enough to cause the flap to peel away altogether after a few minutes, and he doesn't bother to be careful when he wrests the newspaper from its tight container and opens it up. He heads straight to the classifieds, his heart already pumping faster in his chest (though that's far more likely to be connected to the heat than anything to do with his new reading material, of that, he is certain).

As he reads the words, his heart settles immediately back into a steady rhythm and he catches himself letting out a soft sigh of relief. He tries to stop it, but it's too late, and he is plagued by the confirmation that this has been bothering him since their last exchange.

_Forgiving & concerned F, _

_32, WLTM M, 34, who _

_doesn't need to worry. _

It's so obviously her, despite its generic word usage and all round ambiguity, he can see her personality shining through the ink. He can imagine her, curled up at the end of her sofa, laptop open as she chews on her bottom lip, trying to figure out what to say. He sets the newspaper to one side, a small smile forming on his lips, then peels off his sweat stained shirt, flinging it to one side before he hastily removes his trousers and makes himself comfortable on the bed, arranging the mosquito net to ensure that he doesn't get eaten during the night.

He pulls the light cord by the bed and is immersed in darkness, though his eyes soon adjust. With the help of the dim streetlights outside, he is able to reread her words several times, grateful for a little piece of home when he is so far, far away. He loses count of the number of times he goes over it in his head, and it's only as he's losing his battle with sleep that he realises he's been gone for so long that he's missed her birthday.

* * *

Perhaps she's stupid, or perhaps she's optimistic, or perhaps she's both. He goes for long periods without contact, and then she has to wait a suitable amount of time before she can even consider replying, which only drags the whole thing out, given that before she gets into bed after receiving one of his messages, she's usually worked out exactly what she wants to fill her small portion of advertising space with. Regardless of the infinite stretches of time between postings, she is confident that he is alive and well, and even when it makes it to a new record of time without communication, she is still able to (mostly) ignore that horrible sneering voice in the back of her head that tells her she'll be searching the lonely hearts forever, that she'll never find him hidden amongst the pleas.

But, inevitably, she always does. She has a collection now, filed away in the bottom drawer of her desk, which she opens from time to time so she can read through them when she's missing him particularly badly. She's even bought copies of the editions with her own adverts in, so she can flit between them, and it's very much like an old fashioned way of torturing herself by going through text message exchanges with an ex, reliving the smiles and the fluttering hearts and the winking faces that suggest far more than it is appropriate to say in a few abbreviated words.

It's nearing Christmas and for some reason, she is missing him all the more. They had both been lonely the past few Christmases before he went away, him often working a case while she takes up the reigns of the morgue, allowing everybody else to spend time with their families. She had hoped that the party at Baker Street might have changed things a little, but he was too wrapped up in his case (and his (not) girlfriend) to really give a damn about her. Even so, she's used to him being around, particularly when everybody else departs for better things. He was always the constant in her life at Bart's, and she's been dealing with his absence just fine, with the help of his sporadic adverts. Now however, she'd quite like for him to come home, even if it is just to send a barbed comment in her direction about her lurid Christmas jumper or to roll his eyes if sees her within ten yards of mistletoe. The idea of him spending Christmas in some far off country, all alone, is not one that sits well with her.

She tugs off her mittens and shoves them in her coat pocket, then awkwardly navigates to the classifieds, while simultaneously trying not to elbow the middle aged businessman standing next to her in the ribs. Her eyes trail down the page, searching for him somewhere amongst the spinsters, and eventually she finds him, tucked away in the corner.

_M, 35, well travelled, looking_

_for familiar face to help block _

_out this ghastly music._

When she exits the station, newspaper tucked inside her coat to protect it from any adverse weather, she passes several shops, laden with tacky decorations and strings of coloured lights. As people enter and exit the buildings, she is alerted to the occasional blast of music, her lips curving into a smile as she imagines him, thousands of miles away, pacing furiously, hands gripping his hair tightly, as he tries to retreat into his mind palace in order to escape the torture that is _Mistletoe and Wine_.

* * *

He sits on the sand, knees drawn up to his chest, arms resting atop them, as he ponders his next move. The thick white envelope is lying next to him, unopened, the contents of the advertisement within still a complete mystery to him. There are, after all, some things he cannot deduce.

There is a tension in him that he has been unable to shake these last few weeks, as he has drawn closer and closer to the final piece of his puzzle. He knows that he has saved the worst for last, that he has finished ninety-five percent of his work before even considering this task, in the certain knowledge that if there was ever going to be one base he never made it out of, it was this one. At least if he doesn't make it, there'll only be a little cleaning up for Mycroft to do on his behalf.

The sea breeze is cool and refreshing, and he savours it, this last moment of peace before he heads into the lion's den, the calming sound of the waves washing up on the shore, almost managing to settle the jitters that he just hasn't been able to keep at bay. His hand trails through the sand, and soon enough comes to rest upon the envelope, fingertips brushing slowly back and forth against the paper, putting off opening it for some bizarre reason that he can't explain. With each minute that passes, the waves draw ever nearer, and if he doesn't get on with it, the sea will steal away his envelope before he gets the chance to commit one last square of home to memory.

After another few minutes of quiet solitude pass, he reaches breaking point quickly and without warning, and snatches up the envelope, tearing at it greedily until he can get his hands on the newspaper and tug it free. He knows well enough by now where the classifieds are, and finds the page quickly, squinting in the darkness to try and pick out her words. As soon as he reads them, he exhales, and it feels like he's letting go of his fear at last. If he ever wants to see her again, if he ever wants to hear her voice, hear her call him an arrogant sod, then he's going to need to make his way through Macedonia at first light tomorrow. Biding his time on a beach in northern Greece will not see his work finished any sooner. Perhaps he had been holding out for one last word from her, one last reply before he puts his life on the line for the final time.

_F, 32, coping poorly with boredom,_

_WLTM M, 35, for late nights &_

_morbid conversations._

Her message gives him a sense of urgency, something to hurry up and return to, but it's with a great deal of reluctance that he screws up the newspaper after he's memorised each and every word. He digs a small well in the sand and places the newspaper inside it, then reaches across to his discarded jacket and pulls out his lighter. The flames take quickly to the paper, causing it to blacken and curl, and he reaches back into his pocket, pulling out a dozen clippings, reading through each one of them before he tosses them into the flames. After he casts the last one into the fire, he extracts his cigarettes from his jacket, places one between his lips, and lights it, taking a deep drag. If he's going to die at some point in the next few weeks, then there's no harm in him having this one last indulgence. He relishes the richness of the smoke, filling his lungs, tainted only slightly by the fumes from the fire. It doesn't take long for the last of the pages to shrink into tiny charred embers, soon carried away from him by the wind. When the last of them departs, he stubs out his cigarette and pushes himself to his feet, collecting his jacket before he brushes the sand from his clothes. He covers up the well with one swift kick into the sand, displacing a small heap and scattering it over where his clippings had once burned.

He takes one last look out to sea, the saltiness of the air mixing pleasantly with the sweet coarseness of tobacco, and, knowing that he can put it off for no longer, he turns and leaves.

There are some places where she cannot follow him.

* * *

It's been five months. Although it's been a busy five months, she's still been checking every day. She always has those few minutes on her hands, while she trundles along the circle line, crushed between her fellow commuters. The snide, nagging voice at the back of her mind is louder these days, more vocal about all the terrible things that might have happened to him. She has half a mind to get in touch with Mycroft, to see if he knows anything, but to be perfectly honest, she has no idea how she would even go about contacting him. He doesn't deal in secret coded messages in free newspapers, nor does he lower himself to the social convenience that is Facebook. She smiles briefly at the idea of him getting caught up in Farmville, before she spies a discarded newspaper on an empty seat.

Taking the paper, but not the seat (she only has a few more stops) she rifles through the pages until she arrives at her target. She reads the first couple of adverts boredly, her heart sinking when it becomes apparent that they are genuine. Sherlock has never claimed to like long walks, nor is he seeking a _fun-loving but mature woman, for friendship & maybe more._ At least, she doesn't _think_ he is.

When she sees the fine print, very near the bottom of the page, her heart stops, one word jumping out at her from all the others. Four letters, four, beautiful letters, erase all of her concerns and fears for his safety and happiness. She doesn't care that people are looking at her strangely because she's grinning like an idiot while reading the classifieds, nor does she care that she's so caught up in his words that she nearly misses her stop, and has to barge past half a dozen passengers in order to make it to the platform before the doors close again.

She hurries home, clutching the newspaper to her chest, and when she reaches her front door, she jams her key into the lock, opening the door excitedly, and discards her coat and bag as soon as she's inside. She flicks on the lights and takes a seat at her desk, opening up the newspaper so she can have one last read before she files it away in her bottommost drawer.

_M, 36, seeking F, 33, _

_to come home to at the _

_end of a very long day._

* * *

**The End**


End file.
